Many of our older clients are being taken care of by their spouse, or by one or more of their adult children or another family member. The older person of course appreciates the help, and the caregiver feels gratified in their role. The caregiver may also feel extremely guilty if they don not help. The care often takes place in the older person’s home or in the home of a child. Also, spouses and children will at times spend nights in their loved one’s care facility to help with the care.

But, being a caregiver for an older person can be a 24 hour a day, seven days a week job. And, the work can be exhausting. We receive calls all the time from family members or from spouses, who tell us that they can’t do it any more. I remember when my brother and I were trying to take care of our elderly father. My brother and I finally got to the point where we could barely pick our Dad up to help maneuver him to the bathroom. Toileting issues were difficult for everybody. Our Dad also would not cooperate with taking his medications, and there were other problems. My brother and I finally decided that we did not have the requisite skills to properly care for our Dad any longer, but we suffered with the guilt associated with making this decision. I do remember being amazed however, when we hired an experienced in-home care giver for our Dad, how the care giver, because of his training, could easily move our father around.

If you find yourself in the caregiver role, please keep in mind that your own health can suffer as the result of helping your loved one. How many times have we heard of the well spouse passing away from exhaustion caused by her helping her ill spouse? Please give yourself a break. Call other family members and friends to help you. You can utilize adult care services, where you take your loved one to spend several hours during the day. You can also hire a caregiver, and there are many fine agencies in the area who have qualified people who can help you.

Please feel free to contact us if you have questions along these lines, as we may have suggestions for help you can receive within the elder care community

At the Law Offices of Michael J. Young in Walnut Creek, for many years now, we have helped clients and their families with questions such as these. We also continue to help seniors keep what they have earned. We do this through the preparation of asset protection plans, long term care plans, revocable living trusts, powers of attorney and wills, and assistance with applications for Medi-Cal and the VA Aid and attendance Pension Benefit.

Scammers are consistently targeting older people. An older client of ours in Walnut Creek called us to ask how she could be taken to the airport so that she could give a courier $2,500 for a service fee. The service fee was apparently to ensure that she would receive $25,000 that she was told she won in a contest. Our client said that she had made the check out and was ready to have it delivered, and that it had to be delivered no later than 3:00 p.m. that afternoon. We instructed our client to do nothing. We followed up by calling the person back who called her. It was an obvious scam, and we contacted the FBI.

Another client told us that she received an e-mail, purportedly from her grandson, stating that he was in Europe and needed money wired to him right away. The e-mail stated that the grandson had been robbed, had no money, and was living in the street waiting for the money to be wired to him. This was a ridiculous story and an obvious scam Please do not respond to e-mails like these or click their links.

In another case, a man who was almost 90 years old and who was suffering from some dementia, was the victim of a scam involving time shares. An unscrupulous salesman sold the senior a number of time shares, which the older person would never be able to use. Fortunately, the timeshare contracts were reversed by his daughter, but not without a lot of time and effort.

These stories are very disheartening to me, as an Elder Law Attorney in Walnut Creek, who for many years has endeavored to help seniors keep what they have earned. We do this through the preparation of asset protection plans, revocable living trusts, powers of attorney and wills, and assistance with applications for Medi-Cal and the VA Aid and attendance Pension Benefit.

PROBATE is a court proceeding that is used to distribute your assets to your beneficiaries at the time of your death. Probates are complex, and require that numerous forms and regulations be followed, before the court will sign an order distributing your assets to your beneficiaries or heirs.

A probate with regard to your home and other real estate assets can usually be avoided with the use of revocable living trusts. To do this, title to your home would be transfered on the County Record from yourself, to yourself as trustee under your revocable living trust. For instance, the deed would be from John Doe to John Doe as Trustee of the John Doe Revocable Living Trust dated January 15, 2012. The terms of the trust will state who the home will be distributed to after you die, and this transfer can be completed on the County Record without a probate.

However, not everybody passes away with their home in a revocable living trust. There are many occasions where individuals will pass away with their home in their name alone, and they may or may not have a will. A probate will probably be required whether they have a will or not. The terms of the will determine who the beneficiaries of the home will be. If there is no will, the home will be distributed to the “heirs at law” of the decedent.

With regard to real estate, a probate is required to clear the title so that the property can be distributed to the beneficiaries or heirs of the decedent, or so that the property can be sold and the proceeds of sale distributed to the beneficiaries or heirs. Clients will ask me why a probate would be required if the decedent has a will naming somebody as a beneficiary. To find the answer to this, we first need to first look at the County Record to see who the record owner is for the home. The last deed of record could be in the name of John Doe. John Doe is now deceased, so who can sign a deed from John Doe to his beneficiary? The answer is no one, which is why a court order would be required.

Does your Financial Durable Power of Attorney (financial DPA) contain asset protection and government benefits qualification language? It probably does not, unless it was prepared by an elder law attorney. If you lose mental capacity, your spouse or children may be prevented from gifting your assets to themselves, in order to help you qualify for Medi-Cal or for the VA Aid & Attendance Pension benefit.

If your financial DPA contains any gifting language at all, it is probably limited to the annual gift tax exclusion amount, which is $13,000 per person this year. This language is usually of little help for Medi-Cal qualification. In addition, the language will probably not allow for gifting to the ”attorney in fact”, who is the person acting for you. Specialized language is required under the law in order to allow for any gifting to the person acting as the “attorney in fact.” This specialized language usually does not appear in a “regular” financial durable power of attorney.

For instance, the home can easily be established as an exempt asset for Medi-Cal qualification. If the home is in the name of the Medi-Cal applicant who has lost mental capacity, and we want to transfer the home to a child and reserve a life estate to the applicant in order to avoid a Medi-Cal lien, most financial durable powers of attorney will not allow for this. Most financial durable powers of attorney will allow a transfer only upon receipt of consideration from a sale for fair market value of the real property.

To give another example, the Medi-Cal applicant, under the regulations, is allowed to own a life insurance policy, with a pay on death figure in any amount. However, in order to qualify for Medi-Cal, the applicant’s life insurance policy cannot have more than $1500 cash value. If there is a $5,000 cash value, for instance, the Medi-Cal applicant cannot qualify. The remedy is to liquidate the cash from the policy and then gift it out. What do you do however if the Medi-Cal applicant has lost capacity? We need to then look at the powers in the financial durable power of attorney. However, although most financial DPAs may allow for a liquidation of the cash value, they will not allow you to gift the cash out. The Medi-Cal applicant can only retain $2,000 in non qualified accounts, and if the cash from the policy cannot be gifted, it would have to be spent before qualification for Medi-Cal can be obtained.

The financial DPA in an elder law context, is also coordinated with the revocable living trust of the applicant. There should be specialized asset protection language in the trust, which refers to the financial DPA. This specialized language will allow the attorney in fact to “stand in the shoes” of the maker of the trust, for all purposes, including for Medi-Cal qualification. This technique is allowed by law, and provides the greatest amount of flexibility for the family who is helping the older person who has lost capacity, when we are applying for Medi-Cal.

Remember that if existing estate planning documents are not updated before the older person loses capacity, we may have to resort to a court proceeding to modify the language in the documents. This process is expensive and is not always guaranteed. The best approach is to pre-planning, and to have your estate planning documents updated as early as possible by a qualified elder law attorney, who practices full time in this area of the law.

I practice Elder Law and represent the older client and their families. When clients come to see me, their concerns are not so much about what happens when they die, but more about ’What happens if they don’t die.’

Of course, they want to make sure that their assets pass to their family with a minimum of expenses and taxes. But the bigger and more complicated question is, “What happens if I don’t die?” As we know, Americans are living longer all the time. The infirmities of old age may require that we have in home care assistance, or go to an assisted living facility, board and care home or eventually a to a nursing home. We are of course concerned about how we pay for these costs. A regular estate plan does not address these needs. An elder law attorney can prepare a long term care plan for you, and address these needs. He will also address the concern of passing assets to their family.

To put it another way, a regular estate plan insures that if you die, your assets will be passed on to your family the way you want. The operative word is “if”. A regular estate plan will not help preserve assets so that hopefully there will be something left when you die to pass on to your family. As we know, the assets of the older client could be depleted by a nursing home stay or lengthy illness, which could leave their spouse or heirs with nothing.

If you have sufficient assets to pay for long-term care or nursing home costs without running out of funds, then a regualr estate planning attorney may be all you need. However, if you cannot afford the cost of a lenghty nursing home stay, of around $90,000 per year or $180,000 per year for a couple, or more, then an elder law attorney would be able to help you.

For a real life example, Mary and Jim have about $300,000 in assets and a home worth around $500,000. Jim needs assistance and uses a wheelchair. Mary has been providing for his care, but recently has shown signs of forgetfulness and confusion. She has been diagnosed by her doctor as having early signs of dementia.

An estate plan is of course important to Jim and Mary, but this won’t help them deal with the problems they are presently dealing with. They want to tackle the issue of how they will be able to afford the cost of nursing home care should either one or both of them need it. They want to establish how they will be taken care of should Mary’s dementia become more advanced. They want to find out if if they can stay in their home with assistance.

This couple needs a life plan, specific to them, to meet their needs for the future. Jim and Mary need to seek the advice of an elder law attorney.

Elder Law Attorney Michael J. Young practices in the areas of long term care planning, asset protection, government benefits planning and estate planning for the older client in Antioch and the surrounding areas. Mr. Young holds workshops regarding these topics on a regular basis. He is the author of the The Alzheimer’s Legal Survival Kit and The Nuts and Bolts Guide to Veteran’s Benefits. These and other publications and information regarding upcoming workshops are available through Mr. Young’s website at http://www.WalnutCreekElderLaw.com.

Many of Mr. Young’s clients live in Antioch and wish to engage an elder law attorney to help them do their long term care planning for asset protection and government benefits planning such as for the VA Aid & Attendance Pension Benefit and Medi-Cal.

Medi-Cal pays for skilled nursing facility costs. The VA Aid & Attendance Improved Pension Benefit can help pay for in home care, assisted living facilities and the costs of board and care. If you are a wartime veteran, or the surviving spouse of a wartime veteran, over the age of 65 and may be in need of help with activities of daily living, you may want to plan for this little known benefit.

Planning for asset protection, Medi-Cal and the VA Aid & Attendance Pension Benefit usually begins with updating the estate planning documents, such as the revocable living trust and financial durable powers of attorney to include specialized planning language. The focus for this type of planning changes for the older client, to help make our assets last longer, and to create more options. An elder law attorney can help you with this important perspective. We don’t want to run out of money or options as we grow older. The focus on long term care planning changes from “What happens when we die” to “What happens if we don’t die.”

Mr. Young offers a free telephone consultation, and you may contact his office at 925-256-0298, and visit his website at www.WalnutCreekElderLaw.com.

This information is not to be taken as legal advice, and you are encouraged to see an elder law attorney or senior law attorney for your particular situation.